AB is erroneous for all sorts of reasons.
but you kind of dont need to list them when you consider that the whole basis of the theory was mistaken.

its been a statement by trainers in many books for about 70 years that dogs come from wolves, wolves live in packs, the pack has an alpha, the alpha dominates the others by eating first etc, therefore because the dog lives with us it views us as its pack, so we should behave like the alpha wolf by eating first etc.

but this got into the training community then wider public acceptance thru the schenkel study 1947, which david mech has now shown was erroneous as the pack was artificially created in a compound, and they werent blood related.

if you read JF's first book, she just repeats the statement i made above without question, as that was 'accepted fact'.
such generational repetitions of untested unexamined stated 'facts' are called memes.
(another famous one is that the scots, irish, welsh and cornish are celts).

AFAIK, Jan Fennell had not studied wolves herself at that stage.

Completley agree. Like i said, you can list a whole host of reasons why AB doesn't make sense form even a human and canine POV, but they are kind of made redundant when you consider the founding basis (interpretation of wolf behaviour) was wrong

But he (David Mech) also says that it's appropriate to use the Alpha term, that in an artificial pack of unrelated wolves that have been brought together - the wolves will form a pecking order or dominance hierarchy:

http://www.davemech.org/news.html from around 1:30 on.

So if Mech is correct, then is it not possible that earlier conclusions were correct but were derived from flawed thinking?

The biscuit thing is crediting the dog with amazing powers of telepathy and arcane knowledge. The theory is that the dog sees you eat something and `knows` it`s going to get dinner when you`ve finished stuffing yourself. Cos it can foretell the future with its mysterious animal senses.
It also `knows` this proves you are a Superior Being (not of course a mean and greedy plonker teasing a hungry dog with food, oh no...)
And it has understood from the mystical world-mind of the collective unconscious that it is descended from Wolves and the leader eats first (Well, OK, as a matter of fact they don`t but it`s a good line and all that silent loping across the frozen tundra is bl**dy good imagery)
or
has read Jan Fennell`s book.

On the other hand, the dog could be thinking...
just give us the feckin biscuit.

im not too sure of your point.
your link says mech says that the term alpha as used in wolves is erroneous.

of course, if schenkel put together an artifical pack of wolves, then observed, then reported what he saw, of course, then he is correct.

the error was extrapolating that to all wolves then dog trainers extrapolating that to dogs and humans.

at the time, and every book since, trainers have never made this distinction, nor even mentioned schenkel, they just said wolves full stop.
they just repeated the meme in simple terms, so it became a self repeating statement that took on the mantle of fact, merely by dint of repetition.
so the next trainer would repeat the 'fact', which is what Jan Fennell did in her first book, but then built an entire artificial philosophy around it
(kind of appropriate really...artificial fact leading to artifical philosophy )

besides, dogs and humans arent wolves.

also, i have seen a captive wolf pack in scotland.
that had an alpha wolf, but the other wolves did not wait for permission to go for the food thrown over the fence...it was a free for all.

Maybe I've gone beyond the bounds of AB.

Originally Posted by MichaelM
I was under the impression (one of) the reason(s) that dominance/alph roll was being rejected was due to it being based on a study of captive wolves.

correct: schenkel 1947


You've said it yourself:

But Mech has now shown it not to be the case that a true pack has an Alpha dog. But also says that an artificial pack does form a dominnt hierarchy.

So Mech is confirming the 1947 Schenkel study, yes ?

And so, the old school of thought was that a wild wolf pack has an Alpha dog (which they don't). Dominance theory is based the on wolves (because dogs are descended from wolves) And so if anything can be extrapolated from wolves to dogs - then is it not possible that dominance theory could be correct even if it was derived from the incorrect assumption that wild wolves have an Alpha dog.

Or, is there nothing that can be extrapolated from wolves to dogs?

I don't know, and I'm not picking an argument for the sake of it, but I'm questioning. I've often read on here that dominance theory has been disproved because a wild pack does not have an alpha dog - yet no one mentioned that a captive pack does.

A for the Scottish wolf park and all the dogs diving in - what would happen if a limited amount of food was thrown over the fence?

You would need to know how the schenkel wolves were fed.

There is a lot we can learn about domestic dog behaviour from observations of their wild ancestors' behaviour ~ but (and there are a lot of buts!):

• we have to be sure that we are correctly interpreting the behaviours we see in wild canids.
• we have to be sure that we are observing the natural behaviours of these animals in their natural setting. Far too often the very presence of the observer(s) can interfere with natural behaviours.
• we have to be sure that we are looking at species-typical behaviours & that the behaviours we are observing are not specific to that pack, or that location, or that time of year etc etc. This requires studies of lots of e.g. wolf packs, in lots of locations & at different times of the year.
• we have to be sure of the function of the behaviours we observe.
• we have to know how domestication & other factors differentiate the domestic species from their wild counterparts.

It's not easy & far too many spurious associations/reasons/interpretations are accepted without properly conducted scientific research.

No-one disputes that domestic dogs descended from wolves but we must be very careful in just assuming that dog behaviour can be interpreted in the same way as wolf behaviour. We also need to know about the effects of domestication, the effects of living in the modern world, the effects of living alongside humans & other animals etc etc.

I have often wondered about this when people point out that the study is flawed because it was done on captive unrelated wolves. If we are going to compare dogs to wolves in any way surely the comparision with an artifical unrelated pack of wolves is more apt than with a family of wild wolves. Our dogs are unlikely to be related and are not living wild.

Regarding order of eating my own experience has been that it seems to have been of significance for two of my dogs. If Rosie and Tala were fed shortly before we ate then they stayed close and waited expectantly for bits of food. If they were fed last they did not hang around when we were eating.

As for Tess she was never very interested in food and had to be encouraged to eat her own food .